Why Katniss Everdeen is a Passive Hero [SPOILERS]

I completely agree with you in principle. It's so frustrating when however strong or independent women are, they ultimate do as they're told or defer to men just because they're men.

However, I don't think that's what happened at the end of Hunger Games. I got the impression that Katniss didn't want children because she wouldn't want to bring people into the world who would have to go through the same things she did and suffer as she'd seen everyone else suffer - especially after losing Prim. But Peeta doesn't force her to have children, he cared for her and helped her have just something which was good and made the world feel like there might be something to live for, and that having kids wouldn't have to end in disaster. That was my interpretation anyway.

I really didn't like the way they depicted this in the film, she just seemed so un-Katnisslike in that last scene. Just because she's a mother doesn't mean she is a completely different person.

 

I have to agree with Wrey, (though our reasons might be a tad different) about this ending; it doesn't bother me; in fact, I respect the ending more because of this. Kate is not meant to have a happy ending; in fact, the whole subtext behind this is that she has to struggle from going from murderer (she kills a lot of people) to someone who has to raise a family and one day explain to her family what she did and why (which is the true horror of that scene.)

You're look at this as "She submitted to a man!!! (Angry face) when you should be looking at this from "She was broken/defeated long before this scene." (This is why she tries to kill herself after killing Coin.)

 

I, too, haven't read the Hunger Games or seen the movies, but this...

... makes me mad for a different reason. What happened to women wanting to have kids?

When me and my wife were dating my she said: "I want 2 boys, and 2 girls, and in that order, because boys are easier to raise, and girls are a nightmare." Meanwhile, I had never really considered how many kids my family would have, or planned their birth order, as if you could do such a thing.

NOW OBVIOUSLY THIS ISN'T ALL WOMEN, but if you want to include the "children are the future" in your book, why couldn't it be Katniss who wants to have kids? She has a little sister, right? Maybe helping her little sister is a fond memory, so she wants to care for her own little girls, and raise them to shoot bows. It's so much easier to write too, instead of passing it off on Peeta; Kattniss could be the one into kids. Why not?

Also, Peeta now sounds like a total shithead to me, because he's not going to be split from the crotch having these kids, but he expects Kattniss to do it? What the hell sort of guy pressures a woman to have his kids? You may float the idea gently, but if a woman doesn't show interest then shut the fuck up about it. Imagine if someone came up to you and asked "Hey, want to have your hips displaced, and your organs crushed, and gain a bunch of weight, and your penis split in half? No? Come on, it's your duty the man of this marriage. Don't be a cuck."

Women out there, I don't know if you know this, but YOU decide if you're gonna have kids, and I guarantee you there's billions of men out there who don't want children.

Katdog should have turned around and shot Peeta in the neck with that arrow, instead of director dollar.

 

I've only read the first book, and it's been a while since I saw all the movies. But I think some may be reading into this and projecting too much, missing the full context almost to the point that we're not even talking about the canon anymore. An equivalent discussion might be "Why Obi-Wan is a murderer at the end of Revenge of the Sith." You're making this something that it's not.

From what I recall, Peeta isn't pressuring Katniss into this, or using threats or coercion. She's still acting with agency. In the book it was a decision she made after ~two decades, knowing all along that Peeta wanted kids. It wasn't "Peeta hounded Katniss for twenty years until finally she gave in". I agree with some of the other comments that this was something telegraphed from the beginning, and its also partly a result of her changing as a character. Growing up in the dystopian world, she may not have wanted kids, but her maternal instinct is still present with Prim and Rue which is important in showing that the possibility of her being a mother is still open.

Yeah. At the end Katniss probably is more passive. It gave me the feeling that she was burned out. She spent everything she had fighting and being this beacon of hope that she didn't really want to be (she always seemed rather reluctant and doubtful in my opinion, anyway; the whole thing started with a noble sacrifice for the sake of her sister, not some grandiose dream of being a figure of worship). She just wanted to settle down and actually appreciate what they'd all worked so hard to achieve: their world free from Snow's reign and free from the games.

Again, I haven't finished the books and it's been a long time since I've seen the films... but is it not possible that in the end Katniss was unsure of whether or not she wanted to have kids, and enough of that uncertainty was resolved when Peeta expressed his desire to raise kids? Hence "because Peeta wanted them"? Maybe I'm being too lenient with this interpretation.

Deciding to have kids after all, in spite of knowing full-well the dangers in the dytopian world that Katniss exists in and the struggles they'll have to face in the future, isn't a weak, out-of-character decision from my point of view. That's a courageous one. If Katniss' mother and father hadn't made that very same decision, I think it stands to reason that none of this would have come to pass in that universe.

 

My opinion would be soleley based on my interpretation, as all of yours is. However, my only concern is projection. If my take on Katniss' decision is that she made a desperate move to protect her sister, and her inner strength is deeply personal, then she was never active in the first place. Not as the OP projects. The outer display she makes is obviously manipulative, an angry gesture meant to disrupt a soulless, corrupt regime, completely un-heroic. She is also manipulated from the very beginning, by the regime, the people around her (in her new environment), and even her own people. Her motivation is far from noble. It is the people, hers, all of them who rise up, that are of noble motivation - the true heroes.
That said, I force myself to cast my projections aside, and admire her inner strength, and her simple human desire for a quiet life, greatly. The idea that she can't change her mind, and let love motivate her own decision, and have a family for her own reason, is ludicrous and cynical. Your mother is a true hero, most are humanly flawed, all are noble for delivering you (the hope of the future) to the world, whether or not they are victim or volunteer in the process.
I was appalled by the movie. It had no message, and no great cause. It was a psychotic romp, manipulating the audience into cheering for a murderer, among more villianous murderers. It's only purpose was to brutally twist our emotions, and mess with our heads. I'm sure I'll be guilty of same, as I need to kill off two of my FMCs to torture my MC. But it's not my message.
I never wanted to read the books after seeing that movie. Hero and 'Strong Female' are tropes. Look elswhere for the real strong females. I liked Ripley, too, especially in Alien Resurrection. She was a mother, too, sorta.

 

Yeeesss.

Ripley's a female hero I don't see mentioned enough. She's strong and competent, yet weak enough so we feel the pain of her struggle against the xenomorphs. She's one of my favorite characters.

 

My favorite female lead in the Alien series was the Xenomorph Queen.

I always found it ironic that Katniss never wanted to be an idol, a status that was forced upon her, and yet the character is hero-worshipped in some circles as being some sort of standard-bearer of feminism.

 

Your mother is always the standard-bearer of true-feminism, in some way. We weren't created to go to war with each other. Females created males as an act of will, by becoming them, then birthing them. Never forget that. We were created by the Universe to be a community. We are obviously not. That's dangerous.

 

I mostly agree with you. In any case, that's part of why I'm so confused by the discontent with the epilogue of The Hunger Games.

 

I thought it might be helpful to provide the paragraph from the book to which the OP is referring:

They play in the Meadow. The dancing girl with the dark hair and blue eyes. The boy with blond curls and gray eyes, struggling to keep up with her on his chubby toddler legs. It took five, ten, fifteen years for me to agree. But Peeta wanted them so badly. When I first felt her stirring inside of me, I was consumed with a terror that felt as old as life itself. Only the joy of holding her in my arms could tame it. Carrying him was a little easier, but not much. (Collins)

I mean, yeah, you could interpret that as Katniss giving in to what Peeta wants. I wouldn't say, though, that she's submitting to a male's commands or letting a male dominate her. I don't think her reasons for eventually agreeing to children necessarily have anything to do with gender or dominance in the relationship. The last paragraph of the final chapter gave me the impression that their relationship isn't one of dominance/submission; they've become equals in their experiences with suffering and they both give and take from the relationship (though this mainly shows what Katniss takes away from it):

Peeta and I grow back together. There are still moments when he clutches the back of a chair and hangs on until the flashbacks are over. I wake screaming from nightmares of mutts and lost children. But his arms are there to comfort me. And eventually his lips. On the night I feel that thing again, the hunger that overtook me on the beach, I know this would have happened anyway. That what I need to survive is not Gale's fire, kindled with rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself. What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that. So after, when he whispers, "You love me. Real or not real?" I tell him, "Real." (Collins)

Personally, neither of those paragraphs gave me the impression that her choices to be with Peeta and to eventually start a family with him had anything to do with him being some sort of controlling, selfish male and her just not being strong enough to say no. I also don't think this invalidates whatever acts of strength or independence she demonstrated previously, regardless of whether or not gender/dominance does play a role. If one's going to argue that she's a "passive heroine," there are better reasons to support that than this.

As for her reasons, I would have to agree with what others previously said. She agreed because when you're in a relationship, you do things sometimes because it's important to someone you love. No, she did not initially want children for herself, but it doesn't seem like the children are unwanted or unloved by her afterward. The references to spring, rebirth, and life going on in the paragraph of the last chapter also make me think that this is what she wanted. Not necessarily the children specifically, but what comes with them: a chance move on and to find happiness/love again, perhaps the kind of happiness she once had with her own family before the beginning of the series. Just my interpretation, though.

Collins, Suzanne. Mockingjay. Scholastic, 2010.

 

And you don't find that last line to be a tad... needy?

 

Yeah, I would agree with you that it comes across as needy. After all, they've both come to depend on each other. In the first book, they became partners during the Game to survive and they consistently stood by each other afterward, both to survive the second Game plus the political games of the Capitol and to cope with emotional challenges presented to them by their past experiences, their present problems, and the unknowns of their future. They relied heavily on each other for motivation, hope, and comfort. I would be surprised if she didn't feel like she needed him after all of that, so I don't think the neediness of this line is unjustified.

 

Having not read the books, nor watched the movies, it sounds fair enough.
Comparing it to the epilogue that ends the Harry Potter books, it feels very much like Collins wanted above all, a happy ending. I think it's probably that capitulation that irks me more than Katniss being turned into a housewife.

 

I don't see any reason why Katniss can't decide to settle down, and why this is such an upset. It's not like this undoes her past actions. She accomplished what she'd set out to do (as well as finished what she got dragged into), and wants to bring in kids to inherit the new world she helped create. Before under the dystopian dictatorship she felt there was no hope, no future to bring children into, but all that changed.

When she says that she doesn't need Gale's fire because she has "plenty of fire" herself, and then juxtaposes that with how only Peeta can give her "the spring" and "rebirth", I interpret that as meaning she recognizes there would've been no point in all the bloodshed and violence and destruction if nothing new is going to rise out of the ashes to build something better.

To me this is like being confused as to why heroic soldiers or warriors would want to go home after attaining victory, and raise a family and work a normal job.

Thanks @PoemNerd212 for quoting from the actual book ending so that the conversation has a more concrete foundation.

 

I'm a housewife. You say it like it's a bad thing. Could it be that nothing is what we think it is?

 

Holy crap! Talk about insight. If I don't get something, I'll just find you on the site.

 

You're too kind. I still have much to learn - always will - but I'm glad I can contribute what I can, and I'm glad when somebody finds it of benefit.

My last contribution on this topic for now: "But I feel as if I did know Rue, and she'll always be with me. Everything beautiful brings her to mind. I see her in the yellow flowers that grow in the Meadow by my house. I see her in the Mockingjays that sing in the trees. But most of all, I see her in my sister, Prim."

I don't know what page number this would be found on, but according to several sources it's from Catching Fire. I think it excellently displays, with some additional foreshadowing included, a continuity throughout the books. Prim, Rue, the ending. You even have repeated imagery and symbolism: meadow, yellow flowers. It's not by accident lol. Passages like this suggest a consistency or logical evolution in character. Respectfully I am of the opinion that writing off Katniss' decision to have children as "female subjugating herself to authority of a man" is an unfortunate partial misunderstanding of her character, misses some foreshadowing, and requires projecting between the lines of the actual book ending.

 

I read all three books and saw the movies. Her final act of revenge for her sister who was killed by the tactic of killing one's own for empathy to motivate the rebellion, and her recognition she had just fought in a revolution for a new guard that was the same as the old guard was not the least bit passive.

She was overwhelmed being made the symbol of the revolution, more than a few people were using her, manipulating the symbol. Her final act killing the replacement leader was her stepping up and taking control.

To call that final act passive, no, definitely nope.


My apologies, I did not read all of the posts in the thread. But I've looked at a few comments and I'd like to know which 'man' controlled that final act of hers? I can't believe the final act was missed by some in the thread in place of what was essentially an epilogue.

 

Thank you! I do love it when people actually quote a book. I haven't read The Hunger Games, but I'm familiar with the overall story. This post almost makes me want to read the book.

 

I think there's a meta-statement buried in here, on the part of the author. I did actually try to read the books. I have them all. I got halfway through book 1 before the first person present tense made me reach for the Dramamine. I just... can't.

Regardless, more-so in the books than even in the films, much ado is made of the concept of political optics, how you sell a people on a concept like status quo, the importance of the central state, war, and of course, heroes. All of this answering to the larger umbrella of active mythologizing and its evil twin, propaganda.

The scene in book three where Johanna is taking the opportunity to tell Katniss about her Katniss-ness is a nearly word-for-word pull in the film from the book:

"Please. That bullet never even touched you. Cinna saw to that," she says.

I think of the layers of protective armor in my Mockingjay outfit. But the pain came from somewhere. "Broken ribs?"

"Not even. Bruised pretty good. The impact ruptured your spleen. They couldn’t repair it." She gives a dismissive wave of her hand. "Don’t worry, you don’t need one. And if you did, they’d find you one, wouldn’t they? It’s everybody’s job to keep you alive."

"Is that why you hate me?" I ask.

"Partly," she admits. "Jealousy is certainly involved. I also think you’re a little hard to swallow. With your tacky romantic drama and your defender-of-the-helpless act. Only it isn’t an act, which makes you more unbearable. Please feel free to take this personally."

"You should have been the Mockingjay. No one would’ve had to feed you lines," I say.

"True. But no one likes me," she tells me.

"They trusted you, though. To get me out," I remind her. "And they’re afraid of you."​

Here, my simple analysis is that Johanna is explaining what it means to live inside the paradigmatic wrapper against which you are railing. How can you not be part of it? It's all around you; you're inside of it. It is you and you are it, much as you detest it. "Please feel free to take this personally" is - to me - a double entendre. She's indicting Katniss on a personal level, that Katniss has bought into the mythology of her Mockingjay avatar, and she's also making a statement that it was an inevitability from the moment she decided to go along with it, no matter how reluctantly. It's a cynical statement, to be sure, but cynicism only speaks to how we feel about a situation, not to the veracity or objective truth of that situation. A cynical take on something can also be one that is completely true.

 

I'm writing a short-story currently in first-person present tense. What don't you like about it? I had to look up Dramamine; I thought you were talking about a land-mine that explodes with drama, but I think you were talking about an over-the-counter medicine for nausea? xD

Oddly enough I've always found it a strange POV to read and write in, simply because stories are told far more often in the past-tense. I felt it was appropriate for my current short-story though.

Hmm... I'm not sure I totally understand what you mean, but I'll give it a shot.

I was mostly talking about how her intention was to save Prim by volunteering as tribute. She wasn't planning, "I'm going to do this to become a beacon of hope for the oppressed people of Panem, win the games and lead a revolution against Snow and his regime." It got turned into that by other people, with a great deal of reluctance on her part (although not complete reluctance, as your quote shows). I think she was aware that it was a sort of middle-finger gesture to the Capitol at the time, but that isn't so clear because iirc volunteering as tribute was a built-in rule.

In the same way, I'm skeptical that Collins was making the political message with the books that people thought she was making. It's my belief that if she was making the political message with the story that people thought she was making, there wouldn't be a significant amount of people who felt betrayed by the ending. I thought a big theme was sacrifice, which can sometimes *appear* to make a character seem passive, but technically they aren't--with the caveat that if a story about sacrifice is poorly written, it does usually force the main character to be reactionary.

Part of her believes in the Mockingjay myth. Love, and defending the helpless. The key distinction I think here is that those two ideals aren't borne from the Mockingjay myth. They've just been couched into it along with a bunch of propaganda, and the ulterior motives of Coin and others whom were driving the whole show. It's the same way with the concept of "faith" in real-life. It was co-opted by religion, but it can also be separated back to its original form, like dissolving salt into water and then evaporating the water.

Now whether or not there was anything she could've done about that, the obvious answer is no. Well, other than Katniss just giving up and going home. It was all much bigger than herself, and the opportunists saw her as a useful pawn. My point was only that fame and glory weren't things Katniss wanted. Other people kept imposing those burdens on her, not because they had to but because they benefited from it (or were ignorant, like the residents of the Districts would've been).

Interestingly, my interpretation is that being dragged into the war, and being put in a position to set the course of Panem toward a brighter future, allowed Katniss to have what she wanted but couldn't have: a family. Under the dystopian regime, there was no way her conscience would've allowed her to have children. But I think we're shown a would-be mother in her feelings and actions toward Prim and Rue (which I offered some evidence for above, although unfortunately I don't know what page it's from in Catching Fire). And my main point here is that the epilogue isn't really that out-of-character for Katniss, although the way it was executed in the film certainly wasn't as good as the book. If anything, being dragged into the whole Mockingjay scheme by powerful people is what was unnatural, in my opinion.

Sorry if I totally missed your point. I don't think we're talking past one another too badly... You mentioned political optics, and that's exactly what I was referring to. Katniss sacrificed herself for Prim and the big players put some political spin on it and ran away with it. Collins wrote a story with a female lead and people in real life couldn't resist projecting their politics onto Katniss and turning her into something else. I just got a chuckle and smirk out of the irony.

 

I'm just a dude of a certain generation. 1st P/PT - for me - is like trying to read a book with someone else's glasses, someone else's prescription. I couldn't get past it. Clearly my own failing since many people do seem to digest it, as is, but for me, unpalatable.

No worries. What I meant to say was: You mentioned "and yet the character is hero-worshipped in some circles as being some sort of standard-bearer of feminism". The scene between Johanna and Katniss is, for me (yes I'm caveating myself into a ridiculously protected corner given the nature of the topic) has to do with the impossibility of Katniss really fulfilling the very thing you mention, hence the disappointment expressed in the OP, though my initial (and still core) exception I take to that disappointment is in its timing. The OP basically states that Katniss is Goddess of All Badassery™ for the whole story, and then falls off a cliff called Epilogue. I didn't engage that dynamic in the slightest, though, I can see how it would happen if the reader also buys into the "propos", and I think Johanna is indicting Katniss of having done exactly that, buying into the myth of herself as Mockingjay. Katniss points out that Johanna should have been the choice. There is no question whatsoever that Johanna had the moxie, the cojones, the chesticles, however a person wants to put it, to have done it. She's got it. But by her own admission, she lacked the pliability, the moldability, the capacity to buy into the myth and actually become the Mockingjay. The cynical part - for me - comes in the fact that both Johanna and Katniss take note that this facet, the facet they both hate in their own respective ways, was a needful one in order to achieve the goal. It's a bitter pill, and someone had to swallow it, and it was Katniss, and Johanna resents Katniss for having done it, and for not having had the ability herself to have done it. It's an emotional and moral kobayashi maru.

And thus, this thread and its OP give voice to a similar disappointment, to a dissatisfaction with the end result of who Katniss turns out to be. Notice how we dance around the spectacularly incendiary idea of her having children because it would make Peeta happy? Tell me that isn't a pile of C-4 left out in the sun with a magnifying glass propped up next to it. We could argue to the literal end of time over whether this choice was a weak caving in on her part or an attempt to recover a fragmented life and make something out of the choices she already made a long time ago, long, long, long before the epilogue. No one will give an inch on that ground, guaranteed, no matter what side they've staked their respective tents. Not in this day and age.

Katniss makes her choice, and maybe it doesn't make us happy, and maybe it's the choice she thinks will make her happy through her husband (heaven forfend), and maybe, just maybe, not a single one of us in the real world could possibly withstand the kind of whithering scrutiny and expectation that gets applied to a person who's been mythologized into something much larger than any human could possibly be.

 

I totally agree, and couldn't have said it better myself. I can hardly imagine "the kind of scrutiny and expectation that gets applied to a person who's been mythologized into something much larger than any human could possibly be." The closest I can get is through these stories, since Katniss is the main character and it's all experienced through her perspective in "real-time".

For a real-world example, Hayley Williams of Paramore talked about how fans saying that the music "saved their lives" put a lot of pressure on her, and that she was being unfair to herself by carrying that burden when she never asked for it.

I also know what it's like to be starstruck. I met Jimmy Eat World in Cincinnati a while back. It's a surreal feeling when your heroes become people at the shake of a hand, to put it succinctly.

Don't get me wrong, I see how having children *just* to please your spouse could be problematic. I'm only disagreeing with the way that this was being framed by some as "Peta forcing her to obey", or that Katniss doesn't love her kids or get joy from them in the end. I get agitated when people put blinders on the conversation that consequently hides key context. Most of this seems to have been resolved once part(?) of the actual epilogue was quoted verbatim.

And I don't know how fair it is to get upset if one is going to ignore the foreshadowing, the thematic repetition and symbolism, and ironically project onto Katniss in spite of having read three entire books about Katniss being turned into a key on a piano of political optics.

People need to remember that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. I'm not saying that it's an impossibility that Collins wrote The Hunger Games with a message of feminism on her mind, and I'm not saying that people can't project politics onto Katniss or that there's zero benefit in doing so. But "a cigar is just a cigar" is always helpful to consider.

 

I also think we have to be careful about anachronism. A lot of the arguments against her answer to our real world, our 2018, our Anglophone Western Civilization as it is today, now, in this moment.

Katniss doesn't live in this world. Her sets of choices are radically different from ours.

In many ways, we are the denizens of the Capitol with our bountiful choices and our open voices and our ability to culturally rubber stamp almost anything we like as a right.

I think Katniss would be a little (pronounced a lot) repulsed by us discussing her in the third person, as an icon, as a thing over which we brush her aside with a "hush now, the adults are talking, we'll decide what you are and how you work (or don't) for us". I include myself in that. I can feel her wrinkled brow and lip curling up one side, disgusted with me. She has every right.

I certainly remember that feeling, when the Debate Room opened, watching 3 concurrent threads on LGBTQ topic roar like wildfire, the quietest voices belonging to actual LGBTQ people, the loudest belonging to people who believed in their heart of hearts that they knew my life more than I did.

Yeah, I know that feeling.

If we're to engage her with any kind of intelectual honesty, we have to engage her as part of the world in which she lives, which is not the one we inhabit.